Close to Lost
by Endoh
Summary: Buoyant on the dense air, tufts of ash drifted sedately, dandelion parachutes suspended in spring…. It could have been beautiful. Perhaps it was. —"Burn" prompt of SasuSaku Month 2018 on Tumblr—


Hello, all! I swear I'm still around and writing! This is my insanely late submission for SasuSaku Month 2018, Day 4: Burn on Tumblr. I'm new to Tumblr and _loving it_. Find me there (xoxoEndoh) for snippets / work in progress previews...and tons of reblogged fan art. ;)

And a _huge_ shout out to PiePerson! Thank you for all your help with this lil' ficlet—you're a doll! Not sure I ever would have finished this one without your input and encouragement. :)

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Jukebox: "You Are the Moon" by _The Hush Sound_

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"Close to Lost"

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Sakura had been wandering through the secluded training grounds, eyes downcast; her troubling ruminations as much to blame as the glare of the sinking sun. There was something about the place that kept her coming back, something reassuring…. Ever since the start of the chunin exams, she had been unable to quiet her mind. Sleepless nights strung together, wakeful worries interwove: she couldn't shed the net tangled about her.

And through some frayed string of fate, she found the object of her rumination that evening. She caught him in a moment of weakness, shortly after he'd fallen to Sabaku no Gaara and the beast within him, a time near the cruel anniversary of his clan's demise.

And he was sending up flares.

The gradual transition to twilight was the perfect showcase for his fireballs, their red flames churning upward to lick at the weary sun in spite, in _envy_.

They were her beacon, drawing her into the trees.

Under the canopy, the woods were dense and shadowy green—and just as they should be. Yet with every stride, the foliage grew more glaucous; the acerbic smell on the air strengthened, it _burned_ …. And she began to hear the silence as she went deeper. There was nothing. No chirping, no scurrying. No cicadas humming their nightly crescendo, their exaltation of the rising moon. Not even cries warning of her intrusion. Just the sound of her footsteps and breath and the heavy quiet… _Her_ instincts, however, beckoned her onward.

And all at once, she found his fury.

It could have been beautiful. Perhaps it was….

She saw downy dandelion parachutes suspended in spring; she saw windswept sakura petals, lilting and languid at the height of hanami….

Yet she knew she stood in summer. Her hands leapt to cover her mouth, her heart.

Fine motes cast a strange veil to compound the dusk. Tufts of ash drifted sedately, buoyant on the dense air; wispy embers, flickering orange and gold, floated along the heated murk. The incinerated terrain below hissed and sputtered in despairing protest.

A leaf of cartography, an inkwell upturned… He'd stained the land, he'd blotted out the verdant life around him.

The unfurling fumes thwarted her attempt at a calming breath, turning it into a muffled wheeze against her palm. Her fingers tightened at her collar, releasing the steam of perspiration; she shook her head, repelling the flecks as they sifted down. One footfall disturbed the chalk of the forest floor; the next created a small cloud. Uneven as they were, her steps took her through the ruin, the temperature climbing as the sun fell, until she stood a few feet away from the boy she loved. The origin of the blaze…

Her tiny frame trembled faintly in the wafting grey, in the orange glow of smoldering coals. She could feel the heat of his destruction radiating into her skin. And she knew she should look him in the eyes, but she couldn't—not when his gaze had been so blank, so _hollow_ only moments before…. He'd just stood there, among the scattered cinders and flames, the brittle charcoal, the blackened remnants of a vernal woodland. He could have been a child witnessing his first snowfall, dazed, unable to fathom it all. He hadn't said a word. Perhaps he'd been unable.

"S-Sasuke-kun," Sakura began hoarsely, sure in the need to break the silence, to _tell him_ …yet so uncertain in the method, in the phrasing. "The day we became genin…" she trailed off, unable to deny her eyes the scene around him.

The burnt foliage above had come apart at the seams, falling so bright in the maturing darkness. Spores seeking to take root, nascent sparks popped and rocketed skyward to compete with those descending from the treetops. Flurrying and whirling, they clashed. Yet it was a futile rivalry, for even fire was failing: the last of the withering flames lusted after the unburnt traces at his feet; blindly, they reached and stretched and groped the scorched earth for virgin kindling to burn, to _consume_ ….

 _But there's nothing left…._

The notion tugged her from her odd reverie, sent a shiver to shake her spine. She'd seen enough. Sakura bit down on her lip. The grainy dust—the arid, acrid taste of smoke and wrath—lingered on her tongue as her lips parted.

The weight of her words and the pain in the memory sucked the remaining oxygen from the haze around her, forcing her to speak too quickly: "That day, you told me solitude is the worst sort of pain! I-I see it so clearly now, Sasuke-kun! I…" She felt weighted, so heavy. Her short hair shielded her face as she hung her head lower, eyes closed to the irritants and toxins around her. "I…" she tried again, in a whisper, "I didn't back then, I had no idea…" Her voice was stronger: "But I think, maybe now, I understand what the pain of loneliness is. I have family and friends…but… "

She tentatively lifted her head to search for his eyes in the dim. She found them, dark and distant…and waiting. Hers shone and stung with tears to be—from the intensity of his regard; from the airborne debris in the sudden gust. The sparks floating around them flared and billowed on the wind. It whipped their hair; it reanimated the once-settled charred remnants…. Watching the displaced pall subside around her still feet, she waited for the words to come.

When they did, they were frail, fraught: "You feel so far away…."

 _Come back to me_ , hung unspoken.

Recovering herself, Sakura quietly cleared her throat and took a soft step forward. She kept her tone gentle, free of judgement: "It-it breaks my heart, Sasuke-kun, seeing you...like this."

Eyes now keen, now wary on hers, he was still panting from the exertion of forging his own inferno. Singes dotted the skin around his mouth, where he'd exhaled fire. Like hers, his inky hair was dappled. Trickles of sweat streaked through the fine layer of grey on his face, stripping away the corruption, to reveal slivers of the boy she recognized, the boy she loved.

But as she examined the rest of him, she found myriad of scorch marks. He'd been reckless. His dominant arm hung forgotten at his side, the last vestiges of electricity convulsing through his fingers. _So_ reckless...

She clenched the fabric of her dress; she felt her skin cool and prickle, felt the tiny hairs stand on end—like his current had somehow reached her.

 _Burning through your chakra like this—you could have killed_ _yourself! You could have…_

Despite the chill gripping her body, a drop of her own perspiration slid from her temple to her chin. The feeling, though slight, was enough to break her train of thought. For the briefest moment, she wondered what he saw in the vein of clarity it left on her…. She wondered if he could he see anything at all….

The droplet left her skin to disappear in the dust, and her mind centered. Somehow, she knew it was time for honesty. Somehow, she knew he needed to hear it:

"Because…you mean everything to me. _Everything_."

The words had nearly caught in her throat, suspended like the ash in the sweltering air. _I will not cry_ , she told herself. _I won't weep for him. He's never wanted that, he never will—and he deserves_ more _than my tears_.

As tentative as it was instinctual, her hand reached out for his shoulder. Eyes flitting between his and her target, she braced for an adverse reaction upon the moment she made contact, she _expected_ it. Though he stiffened, he didn't swat her away or shrink back: he just stood there and allowed her featherlike touch; watching the dust settle to further mute her bright hair, questioning her with his dubious silence.

Her eyes rose from his shoulder to scrutinize the three black tomoe etched into his neck, as they so often did, and she silently cursed the Snake. Beyond the singes, the malicious, black mark was the only blemish on his body—the only visible manifestation of his suffering! Unless, of course, he set the coal of his eyes aflame…

And she'd seen the frightening power of both.

 _Is that what you were thinking, Sasuke-kun? ...Is that why you did this?_

The fingers at the red of her collar clamped down, she moved to bite her lip again—but she stopped herself. She couldn't give in to such a childish habit when she'd come this far, when he was _listening_. Determined, the verdure of her eyes returned to his.

"You don't have to be alone, Sasuke-kun," she spoke soothingly, careful to avoid a patronizing tone. "You'll always have me." As a shy smile formed around her last word, she felt blood rush to her flame-flushed cheeks. Sakura ignored the sensation and forced her lips to loosen: this wasn't the time to give in to girlish whimsy; she'd make her body _obey_. She bent her elbow to step solicitously closer, close enough to smell the earthy scent she knew to be his through the miasma. One hand on him, the other on her heart, she swore: "Always."

 _I love you so much…with all my heart_ , she thought, _but I don't think I can tell you that, not yet._

She gingerly traced his shoulder, nails collecting the fine, gritty precipitate there. She could feel the dexterity in the muscle, the power in the sinew…. And he didn't flinch under her light touch, he didn't avert his eyes. She moved nearer, preparing to see alarm or revulsion appear in his expression, until her forearm was flush against the length of his bicep, only a few inches of smoke separating the rest of them. She couldn't blink, she couldn't breathe for fear of dispelling the moment, her chance to _reach_ him….

A branch snapped behind him; coils of red outlining its remaining leaves, faux fireflies swarming and twinkling in its wake. The fallen limb rippled through the powdery soot at the forest floor, sending it aloft once more.

Yet neither noticed, their senses entirely focused on the other.

Sakura was transfixed. She could see the suffering, the perpetual ache, the _torment_ in the ink of his eyes—and it was dizzying. She'd known it was there, but she'd never seen its full extent…. She'd never seen it so _close_ , so unconcealed. And just beneath, there was the acidic fury she'd tasted in the ashes. Tonight, his anger had burned too hot for his body to contain. The devastation around them, she realized, had been a momentary lapse in control, a flare of his temper. A mere glimmer of the roiling, lambent blaze inside him…

 _Hatred_.

Its conflagration eclipsed the flicker of him that existed beyond loathing and vengeance—the flicker the Snake had tried to snuff out, the flicker she'd managed to sustain when his darkness burned black through his skin. She saw it so clearly then, for in that moment, he was living only for the past, only for the promise of retribution….

But they both knew the inevitability in fire….

One tear escaped to flow down her face: she could feel desperation coming on the night.

...They'd known it long before witnessing the aftermath of his arson.

Ignoring the shriek of warning she heard in the back of her mind, she stood on pointed toes and flung her arms around him. The impact of her embrace released a plume of ash to envelop them. She pressed her face to his neck, her lithe body to his, the muck on his skin coloring hers.

"I won't let you be alone anymore," she promised in a murmur to his ear, eyes shut to the despair around them. "Never again."

She waited, stunned at her own audacity.

His heart thudded into hers; his chest expanded as he inhaled. The blue-black fringe at his nape stroked her forehead.

The last traces of tree sap crackled and bubbled in the dimming embers, crystalizing as the surviving coals waned to a low gleam….

Her eyes flew open, dilating in panic, in the umbrage: she felt the muscles in his hanging arms spasm and contract, considering motion. But she didn't dare let go—not when he felt so close to lost.

So, eyes agape, she froze, not risking a breath….

Over his shoulder, she could see the world turn to shadow as the sun finally vanished. At last unobscured, sweet silver streamed down to mottle the earth, to temper the remaining hues of red and orange and yellow.

The shimmering perigee of moonrise...

The beginnings of a familiar nocturne hailed its coming: the warble of a songbird announced its proximity; insects revved and stammered, grappling toward their usual thrum; an owl called out, wistful and clear.

And then—haltingly, devoid of his usual grace—he bowed his head until his cheek rested on her hair.

Unsure if she was imagining it, afraid to dissolve the mirage, she held her gasp in her chest.

She felt the low rumble of his voice before she heard it, smoky on the clearing air:

" _Sakura…_

… _thank you…"_

His breath, his words were soft on her skin…. They were warm.

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So, what did you think? I'm still feeling _so_ rusty when it comes to writing, particularly something like this…. Spent so much time second-guessing myself and nitpicking, and I really hope I got it right.

Your input is always appreciated, even if it's just one word!

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XOXO

Endoh

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PS: For you lovely _D &D_-, _AND_ -, and "HWM"-readers out there—I have not forgotten about those fics! Thank you for keeping my motivation going with your comments. :)

PPS: If this sounds vaguely familiar to you, you have one _epic_ memory. It's adapted from the prologue of an old fic of mine (like 2009)! I currently do not plan to revisit that one, though. Too many things on my plate atm.


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